On the 3rd of December, 1979, English rock band The Who were scheduled to play a concert at the
Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thousands of general admission ticket holders gathered
outside the venue hours before the scheduled start of the concert, but were kept waiting outside
by organizers while final arrangements were made for the night's performance.
When the go-ahead was finally given to let the waiting crowd inside only two doors were opened.
Two doors for more than 8,000 people.
By the time The Who actually did take to the stage that evening 11 of their fans would be dead.
The Who were, at the time of the disaster, undertaking the US leg of a world tour.
Tickets to see them were in incredibly high demand. 18,348 tickets were put on sale for
the concert at the Riverfront Coliseum, and every single one of them was sold in under two hours.
As with many concerts at the time, the majority of these tickets were sold on a
"festival seating" basis. Another way of describing this might be,
"first-come first-served". Under the festival seating system,
general admission ticket holders could pick their seats within an assigned area, and so
those who entered the venue first would generally get a better view than those who came later.
This system was not without its problems. When seating wasn't assigned many people would sit in
the aisles for a better view, sometimes completely blocking them. Minor crushes were also common,
as fans would often gather outside venues hours before concerts began,
and then rush the gates when they opened in a race for the best seats in the house.
On the 3rd of december, 1979, this is exactly what happened. Many ticket holders had been
told by a local radio station that they would be granted admission from 3:00pm, and so arrived a
few hours before that at 1:00pm. They gathered in the car park outside the Riverfront Coliseum,
smoking, drinking, socializing and waiting for the doors to open... but the doors did not open.
As time passed the crowd swelled. At around 3:00pm police were called in to manage the growing number
of people outside the venue. By most estimates there were several thousand people present at
this time, with more arriving every hour. The doors remained shut. As the hours wore on the
crowd concentrated around the closed doors, poised for the moment when they would finally be opened.
By 7:00pm, four long, cold hours after many in the crowd had been
told they would be granted admission, some fans were losing patience.
Small crushes developed around several of the doors with people pinned in
place against the glass, unable to move as those behind them pushed blindly forwards.
The venue, however, wasn't ready.
Organizers didn't have enough staff available to act as ticket takers,
and also wanted to allow the band time for one final sound check before the concert began.
This sound check, according to some witness testimony, played a fateful role in what
happened next. From outside the venue it may have sounded as though the concert was beginning,
something which caused patrons at the back of the crowd to start pushing.
At roughly the same time, two doors on the right side of the main entrance were opened. The result
was an intense crush around these doors. Staff from the Coliseum tried to hold the crowd back
while they doggedly checked tickets. The crowd compacted. creating not a stampede but a slow,
steady squeeze which lasted around half an hour. Reports of the crush note that people were pressed
up against the glass doors or picked up and carried by the sheer pressure of the crowd.
Survivors report feeling that they were trampling on fallen concertgoers, but being so tightly
pinned in place they were unable to do anything but scream for those further back in the mass
of people to stop pushing. One survivor recalls quite vividly being stuck standing in a crowd
so tight that everyone around him was straining upwards, mouths open, just trying to breathe.
The heat of bodies created a visible vapor cloud over the densely packed throng of people.
The police watching from outside the venue refused to help, in part perhaps because
they believed the crowd to be composed largely of hysterical drug users. Several survivors
report escaping the crush, and running to the police to beg them to take action...
only to be reprimanded and told to refrain from telling the police how to do their job.
In any event, no help was forthcoming from the authorities. But what about the staff within the
venue? It appears that they didn't realize the magnitude of the crush until after most of the
concertgoers had been admitted. Although several people died within minutes of the crush beginning,
their bodies were held in a standing position by the pressure of the crowd.
Only once the crowd cleared did the dead and injured become evident. Also revealed
was a raft of shoes, wallets, clothing, and other personal effects that had been
ripped from the bodies of those in the crush, along with thousands of bloody footprints.
Indeed, some patrons would only later discover blood on their shoes.
Management of the Riverside Coliseum assessed their options, and decided to go ahead with
the concert as planned, despite the carnage. Cancelling it, they feared, might result in
another crush as 18,000 angry patrons stormed out of the venue. While The Who took to the stage,
the dead were removed from the scene and the seriously injured transported to hospital.
11 people died as a result of the crush. They were 22-year-old Walter Adams Jr,
18-year-old Peter Bowes, 21-year-old Connie Sue Burns, 15-year-old Jacqueline Eckerle,
19-year-old David Heck, 27-year-old Teva Rae Ladd, 15-year-old Karen Morrison, 19-year-old Stephan
Preston, 20-year-old Philip Snyder, 17-year-old Bryan Wagner and 21-year-old James Warmoth.
The Who were not told what had happened until after they finished playing.
By all accounts they were immensely distraught. They considered cancelling the rest of their tour,
but realized that if they did so they would never play again.
Instead they dedicated their next concert to the fans that had died
with the words, "We lost a lot of family last night. This show's for them."
Interviews show that even decades later members of the band are still haunted by the disaster.
The response to the tragedy from the wider world was at times unsympathetic.
Some commentators blamed the victims. The crowd, they alleged, had been drunk and violent, and had
behaved like animals. The crush was initially reported as a stampede of drug-crazed youths...
a description which many who had been involved in the incident hotly disputed.
As the disaster was investigated, it became clear that the use of festival seating had played a key
role in events... and moreover that there had been many warning signs of an impending tragedy.
There had, for example, been minor crushes at several previous concerts. The venue had been
repeatedly criticized for fire safety violations, for overselling events,
and for refusing to cooperate with the police in emergency situations. Many of these accusations
were disputed by Coliseum management, who insisted that since the area immediately
outside their doors was city property they really weren't responsible for what happened there.
Further to this, many people - including fire chiefs and city
councillors - had criticized festival seating specifically,
noting that the problem was getting worse over time as concertgoers turned up at the venue
earlier and earlier. Again Coliseum management waved away concerns, claiming that concertgoers
liked festival seating, and that as such it should remain.
As a result of The Who concert crush some action was finally taken.
Cincinnati, along with several other cities, banned festival seating,
and now limits the number of tickets that may be sold for an event, to guarantee a certain amount
of space per person inside a venue. News of the disaster helped to propagate these measures, and
unassigned seating at rock concerts is now almost never permitted. The Riverfront Coliseum has
greatly improved its safety record, and rebranded. It is now known as the Heritage Bank Center.
More than 35 years after the disaster a memorial marker was installed on site,
bearing the names of those who died. The text on the marker gives a brief summary of events
that transpired on the 3rd of December, 1979. "11 concertgoers, trapped in a crush of people,
died at the southwest plaza entrance to the Riverfront Coliseum waiting to see The Who. Many
others were injured in what was the deadliest concert tragedy in United States history.
The tragedy spurred passage of a crowd safety ordinance which became a model for the world."